Don't Let Him Know
In a boxy apartment building in an American university town, Romola Mitra, a young bride, anxiously awaits her first letter from home in India. When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds the letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes, and a way of following their keepers. Moving from adolescent rooftop games to adult encounters in gay bars, from hair salons in Calcutta to McDonald's drive-thrus in California, this is an unforgettable story about family, the struggle between having what we want and doing what we feel we must - and the sacrifices we make for those we love.
SANDIP ROY is a writer and journalist based in Kolkata. He has been a long-time commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, one of the most listened-to radio programmes in the US, and has a weekly radio postcard for public radio in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been Senior Editor at the popular Indian news portal Firstpost.com and editor with New America Media. Sandip has won several awards for journalism and contributed to various an thologies including Storywallah!, Contours of the Heart, Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India,Out! Stories from the New Queer India, New California Writing 2011 and The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India. Don't Let Him Know has been shortlisted for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award for Fiction, and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award and the Green Carnation Prize. @sandipr
In a boxy apartment building in an American university town, Romola Mitra, a young bride, anxiously awaits her first letter from home in India. When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds the letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes, and a way of following their keepers. Moving from adolescent rooftop games to adult encounters in gay bars, from hair salons in Calcutta to McDonald's drive-thrus in California, this is an unforgettable story about family, the struggle between having what we want and doing what we feel we must - and the sacrifices we make for those we love.